The Law Handbook 2024

878 Section 9: Health, wills and other legal issues affecting older people • the health service provider, without a reasonable excuse, does not participate in the complaints resolution process; or • there has been a contravention of the Code of Conduct. The HC Commissioner has the capacity to hold a hearing as part of an investigation and to conduct a commissioner-initiated investigation following consultation with the President of the HC Commissioner Advisory Council. The HC Commissioner can make public health warning statements and general health service warning statements and can apply both interim and ongoing prohibition orders for non-registered health workers. These orders are appealable to VCAT and there are significant penalties to both individuals and corporations for contravention of those orders. Complaint Data Reviews gather information about the complaints received by the HC Commissioner and the HC Commissioner can make recommendations to health services about any trends identified by those reviews. In accordance with the HC Act, the HC Commissioner has developed complaint-handling standards in consultation with health service providers, the public and other interested stakeholders. Ahpra and registration boards Australia has a national uniform system of health practitioner regulation for the 16 health professions regulated under the National Registration and the Accreditation Scheme. These professions are: • Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health practitioners; • Chinese medicine practitioners; • chiropractors; • dental practitioners (including dentists, dental hygienists, dental prosthetists, dental therapists); • medical practitioners; • medical radiation practitioners; • nurses and midwives; • occupational therapists; • optometrists; • osteopaths; • paramedics; • pharmacists; • physiotherapists; • podiatrists; and • psychologists. Each State and Territory has passed legislation in substantially the same form to regulate these professions, based on a piece of Queensland legislation. In Victoria, the law is called the Health Practitioner Regulation National Law (Victoria) Act 2009 (Vic). The legislation in each State and Territory establishes a national board for each of the regulated professions. The boards are intended to operate as if they are a single national entity. Their primary role is to protect the public by setting and enforcing standards and policies that all registered health practitioners must meet. Ahpra supports the national boards in imple­ menting the national scheme. Ahpra’s operations are governed by the Health Practitioner Regulation National Law in force in participating jurisdictions. In addition, Ahpra: • manages the registration of health practitioners and students around Australia; • receives notifications from the public about the professional conduct, performance or health of registered health practitioners or the health of students; • manages investigations into the professional conduct, performance or health of registered health practitioners (except in NSW, where this is undertaken by the Health Professional Councils Authority and the Health Care Complaints Commission, and Queensland, where this is also undertaken by the Office of the Health Ombudsman); • publishes national registers of practitioners, so important information about the registration of individual health practitioners is available to the public; • works with health complaints entities in each state and territory to ensure the appropriate organisation investigates community concerns about individual registered health practitioners; • supports the national boards in the development of registration standards, codes and guidelines; and • provides advice to the Ministerial Council about the administration of the national scheme. For more information, contact Ahpra. Under the Health Practitioner Regulation National Law (Victoria) Act 2009 (Vic), the HC Commissioner and Ahpra are required to consult each other when a matter related to either’s jurisdiction is received, to determine which organisation is best suited to manage the matter.